Tag: Social change

Social Change: Civil Rights

A page from the Fall 1937 Harper & Brothers catalog touting This Is My Story by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Beginning with This Is My Story (1937), Harper & Brothers published many works by Eleanor Roosevelt that promoted civil rights and the need for government action, including This I Remember (1949), On My Own (1958), and Tomorrow Is Now (1963). More

Black Boy

Black Boy
A powerful and eloquent autobiography that has sold more than a million copies since publication. More

The Book of Negroes

The Book of Negroes
A milestone in Canada’s understanding of black history and one of the bestselling books in Canadian publishing history. More

Garth Williams, Illustrator

Marketing flyer promoting the 1946 publication of Little Fur Family, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Garth Williams.
Garth Williams was a little-known but talented young illustrator when he was commissioned by Ursula Nordstrom, head of Harper’s Department of Books for Boys and Girls, to illustrate the classic Stuart Little by E. B. White. More

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman
This newly discovered novel from beloved author Harper Lee became the bestselling book of 2015. More

Judith Kerr: Beyond The Tiger Who Came to Tea

Judith Kerr.
Collins author Judith Kerr may be best known in the UK for her classic children’s picture books The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Mog the Forgetful Cat, but she is also renowned for her powerful autobiographical novels about her childhood and young adulthood. More

Education and Publishing

Title pages of several books featured in Harper’s Family Library in the 1830s, including The History of the Bible and The Lives of Celebrated Travelers.
Beginning in 1830, the Harper brothers believed that the increasingly literate populace might clamor for turnkey collections. More

James Harper, Mayor Of New York City

Official City Hall portrait of James Harper
With corruption rampant in New York City politics, the newly formed American Republican Party convinced James Harper, one of the brothers who had founded J. & J. Harper in 1817, to run for mayor. More

Gabriel García Márquez

Telegram dated October 21, 1982, in which Harper editor Cass Canfield Jr. congratulates Gabriel García Márquez on winning the Pulitzer Prize for One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Gabriel García Márquez drew on his childhood experiences in Colombia when crafting the story of the fictional Buendía family in the classic One Hundred Years of Solitude. More